IN THE EAST END OF LONDON
SOME years ago, when I was living in Europe, I went for six months to reside in the very poorest part of the East End of London, when I made friends with a poor Jewish woman. She took me into the tiny one-roomed tenement where she and her husband and their children lived on the few shillings a week they earned by their joint labour. Though it had all the misery and confinement which extreme poverty means in a great city, I had yet often a curious feeling that it was a home. With however much difficulty, a few pence would be saved to celebrate, if it were but in a pitiful little way, the festivals of their people; though it were by starving themselves, the parents would lay by something for the education of their children or to procure them some little extra comfort. And the conclusion was forced on me that, taking the very poorest class of Jew and comparing him with an exactly analogous class of non-Jews earning the same wages and living in the same locality, the life of the Jew was, on the whole, more mentally healthful, more human, and had in it an element of hope that was often wanting in that of others. I felt that these people needed but a little space, a little chance, to develop into some far higher form. The material was there.
Therefore I would welcome the exiled Russian Jew to South Africa, not merely with pity, but with a feeling of pride that any member of that great, much-suffering people, to whom the world owes so great a debt, should find a refuge and a home among us.
OLIVE SCHREINER, 1906.
THE RUSSIAN AGONY[59]
I. THE BEGINNINGS
IN 1563 Ivan the Terrible conquered Polotzk, and for the first time the Russian Government was confronted by the fact of the existence of the Jewish nationality. The Czar’s advisers were somewhat perplexed, and asked him what to do with these newly acquired subjects. Ivan the Terrible answered unhesitatingly: ‘Baptize them or drown them in the river’. They were drowned.
P. MILYUKOV, 1916.
II. IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY[60]
FEW facts in the nineteenth century have been so well calculated to disenchant the believers in perpetual progress with their creed as the anti-Semite movement, which in a few years has swept like an angry wave over the greater part of Europe.
The recent movement for proscribing, under pretence of preventing cruelty to animals, the mode of killing animals for food which is enjoined in the Jewish ritual, is certainly at least as much due to dislike to the Jews as to consideration for cattle. It appears to have arisen among the German anti-Semites, especially in Saxony....
The Russian persecution stands in some degree apart from the other forms of the anti-Semite movement, both on account of its unparalleled magnitude and ferocity, and also because it is the direct act of a Government deliberately, systematically, remorselessly seeking to reduce to utter misery millions of its own subjects.
An evil chance had placed upon the throne an absolute ruler who combined with much private virtue and very limited faculties all the genuine fanaticism of the great persecutors of the past, and who found a new Torquemada at his side. He reigned over an administration which is among the most despotic, and probably, without exception, the most corrupt and the most cruel in Europe.
W. E. H. LECKY, 1896.
III. IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
TO lock people like wild beasts in a cage, to surround them with disgraceful laws, as in an immense circus, for the sole revolting purpose to let loose the murderous mob upon them whenever practicable for St. Petersburg—terrible, terrible!
Anti-Semitism is a mad passion, akin to the lowest perversities of diseased human nature. It is the will to hate.
The Emperor Hadrian was an honest anti-Semite.One day, the Talmud records, on his journey in the East, a Jew passed the Imperial train and saluted the Emperor. He was beside himself with rage. ‘You, a Jew, dare to greet the Emperor! You shall pay for this with your life.’ In the course of the same day another Jew passed him, and, warned by example, he did not greet Hadrian. ‘You, a Jew, dare to pass the Emperor without a greeting!’ he angrily exclaimed. ‘You have forfeited your life.’ To his astonished courtiers he replied: ‘I hate the Jews. Whatever they do, I find intolerable. I therefore make use of any pretext to destroy them.’
So are all anti-Semites.
LEO TOLSTOY, 1904.
IV. THE MORAL
THE study of the history of Europe during the past centuries teaches us one uniform lesson: That the nations which have received and in any way dealt fairly and mercifully with the Jew have prospered; and that the nations that have tortured and oppressed him have written out their own curse.
OLIVE SCHREINER, 1906.
THE BLOOD LIBEL
BRITISH PROTEST, 1912
WE desire to associate ourselves with the protests signed in Russia, France, and Germany by leading Christian Theologians, Men of Letters, Scientists, Politicians, and others against the attempt made in the City of Kieff to revive the hideous charge of Ritual Murder—known as the ‘Blood Accusation’—against Judaism and the Jewish People.
The question is one of humanity, civilization, and truth. The ‘blood accusation’ is a relic of the days of witchcraft and ‘black magic’, a cruel and utterly baseless libel on Judaism, an insult to Western culture, and a dishonour to the Churches in whose name it has been falsely formulated by ignorant fanatics. Religious minorities other than the Jews, such as the early Christians, the Quakers, and Christian Missionaries in China, have been victimized by it. It has been denounced by the best men of all ages and creeds. The Popes, the founders of the Reformation, the Khalif of Islam, statesmen of every country, together with all the great seats of learning in Europe, have publicly repudiated it.
Signed by:—
The ARCHBISHOPS of CANTERBURY, YORK, ARMAGH; the CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP of WESTMINSTER, and the HEADS of all other CHRISTIAN DENOMINATIONS.
The BISHOPS of LONDON, OXFORD, WORCESTER, WINCHESTER, BIRMINGHAM, GLOUCESTER, LIVERPOOL, MANCHESTER, &c.; the DEANS of WESTMINSTER, CANTERBURY, NORWICH, RIPON, &c.
The DUKES of NORFOLK and NORTHUMBERLAND, and the EARLS of ROSEBERY, SELBORNE, and CROMER; LORDS MILNER and RAYLEIGH; A. J. BALFOUR, SIR EDWARD CARSON, GEN. N. G. LYTTELTON, &c.
FREDERIC HARRISON, A. V. DICEY, SIR WILLIAM OSLER, SIR FRANCIS DARWIN, SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY; JAMES A. H. MURRAY, NORMAN LOCKYER, J. G. FRAZER, &c.
SIR OLIVER LODGE, the PRINCIPALS of eleven OXFORD COLLEGES; the MASTERS of seven CAMBRIDGE COLLEGES, S. R. DRIVER, F. C. BURKITT, A. E. COWLEY, W. SANDAY, H. B. SWETE, ESTLIN CARPENTER, A. E. GARVIE, A. C. HEADLAM, KIRSOPP LAKE, &c.
JUSTICES EVE, WARRINGTON, and VAUGHAN WILLIAMS.
A. C. DOYLE, THOS. HARDY, ANTHONY HOPE, A. QUILLER-COUCH, G. B. SHAW, H. G. WELLS, &c.
The EDITORS of the Edinburgh, Quarterly, Fortnightly, Hibbert, Quest, Spectator, Nation, Daily Telegraph, Manchester Guardian, Daily Chronicle, Daily News, Pall Mall Gazette, &c., &c.